


Dear Danny

by joannereads



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26283427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joannereads/pseuds/joannereads
Summary: Steve writes a letter to Danny when he realises he has radiation poisoning. A goodbye letter he never thought he would write.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 38
Kudos: 121





	1. Chapter 1

_Dear Danny,_

“Shit,” Steve breathed, tossing the pen down onto the desk again. Two plus decades in the military and he had always refused to write one of these – the ‘if I die’ letter. Refused. Because he didn’t ever believe he was going to die. In fact, he was certain he wouldn’t.

And it wasn’t arrogance, rather it was determination. There was a mission to complete and, if he didn’t get it done, then someone else was going to die. He wasn’t prepared to live with that.

Of course, Freddie did die. But then Steve came home and there wasn’t really another mission. Sure, he’d disappeared a few times to get things done, but they weren’t missions. And the one time Steve did leave Danny a letter it had gone really quite badly.

But he had to write this one. Because this wasn’t a mission. And it wasn’t a disappearing act. But it might just be the fight of his life. Steve simply couldn’t risk dying without knowing that Danny would be told everything. All the things Steve had wanted to say but never found the words to say in person.

He drew a deep breath and picked up the pen once more, determined this time to get the letter done. For Danny.


	2. Chapter 2

Dear Danny,

It’s strange, to be putting pen to paper like this for you when you all but ripped me a new one the last time, but I’ve had to face a few facts in the last couple of days and I have to do this—to write this—so that I can put it to bed and focus on me.

I went to the doctor’s yesterday. I know you know because you highlighted it on the calendar so I wouldn’t forget. Just a routine work up, something to face when you’re drifting as we are into our mid-forties. But I feel so much older, Danny. I worked hard to look after my body, but not hard enough in the long run. Now there might not even be a long run, and I’m scared.

That’s tough for me to admit, and I can already hear you in my head congratulating me for admitting a feeling. This one, though, fear, makes me sick and I hate it. I’m not one to back down from a challenge, from a fight, but this particular fight is so personal that I don’t have much of a choice. After all the concussions, the strains and sprains, the transplant, I pushed it one step too far. But I did it for you, Danny, so that you wouldn’t have to. And I will always be glad about that now.

I have radiation poisoning. I know you know something’s wrong. You’ve been giving me this look for the last few days, more so after I got back from the appointment. But I’m not ready to tell you yet. I will, when the time is right, but you’re going to blame yourself and I need to live with this for a little while before we live with it together. It’s not likely to kill me, not directly, but indirectly the probability is ‘high to very high’. Maybe cancer (mostly cancer, honestly) but any other host of complications. The transplant already extended my life, but now this might just half the time I have left.

You noticed the symptoms before I did. You told me I wasn’t eating properly and that I always seemed to have a headache. It’s why I made the appointment—to shut you up. But I was scared because I’ve read the literature and googled my symptoms, even after having been trained for this sort of exposure by the Navy. Of course it was the radiation. I feel so sick almost all the time and I’m so tired. The aches and pains are almost as bad, but they mostly feel like a too-long workout so I can ignore them.

What I can’t ignore is the fear. I’ve never put one of these letters together, Danny, and I know I’ve told you that before. But I can’t ignore that this has brought my mortality to the forefront as suddenly and surely as if death himself had arrived on my doorstep. When I try to sleep, I see you and Gracie and Charlie and it tears me up to think I might not see them grow up, might not have to talk you through the panic of Gracie’s wedding day, or get to see Charlie even graduate. But you? You’re the worst. Because I’m scared I might have neither the time nor the courage to tell you that I love you.

I know we say it a lot, that we throw it about, and it’s not meaningless when we do that, but I mean this in a different way. At least I think it’s different to how you mean it. I love you. I wish that I had found the courage to say it and explain it when I realised what it really meant. But I wasn’t ready and neither were you. But you have to know how important you are, how important the family you gave me is, and how I’m so painfully sorry that I’m not likely to make it to the end with you.

When I came back from Japan five years ago, after the first letter I left you, and you hugged me on the tarmac, that’s when I knew. I felt it in my bones. The idea of being away from you was awful. I felt nauseous imagining it, and it was the worst kind of nausea because there was no cure. (And believe me when I say I know about nausea at the moment.) Your arm around my waist, mine around your shoulders, your smile: they all said ‘welcome home’ and it made me want to stay there forever, right there in that moment, even as the dried blood from yet another fight tightened my skin and itched at my senses. I felt so bad for leaving but I had to do it, I had to find the answers, and I didn’t want you to feel like you had to come. We both know if I had discussed it beforehand that you would have argued your way in and left Gracie behind to come with me. And I would have let you. I couldn’t do that to either of you.

You didn’t seem to feel the same way, or if you did you hid it well. First with Gabby, then with Melissa (or Amber – I know you liked her, but what she put you through still makes me angry, Danno, and I can’t forgive her like you did). I know you probably thought that I was hiding too, but I wasn’t. I loved Cath, though in the end she treated me just like my mother and that was something unforgivable too. I wanted to make it work with someone so that I could move on, so that I could forget about how I felt about you because I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t walk away from us, so I had to find a way to separate out my feelings and try to bury them until they weren’t as strong.

I didn’t do a very good job of it. But I wasn’t brave enough to change the status quo. We were happy, best of friends. You’ve come to save me every time I’ve needed you to, and I’ve done the same for you I think. I realised that it wasn’t going to go away, this way I felt about you, when you came to Afghanistan. I’ve never told anyone, but just before the team arrived to pull me out, I really thought I was going to die. That level of fear is intense, having a machete aimed at your throat and believing no-one knows where you are. Okay, so I’m not ashamed to tell you that I still have nightmares about that. But I also have dreams about waking up and finding you alongside me, watching me, waiting for me. And those dreams fill me in a way I don’t know if I can explain in words. I know, if it hadn’t been a military hospital in the middle of Afghan territory, that you would have been holding my hand. You were still protecting me.

And you left Grace behind to come get me. Every time. Every time you did that for me I thought that maybe you loved me like I loved you. But we would come home and settle back into the same ruts we ran in. I wasn’t sad about it, because I still had you in my life, but then it felt as though something was missing. Not quite whole, you know?

And as the years have gone on, and as Charlie has come into your life, I see you all less and less. I get that you’re busy and you have a nice house of your own so you don’t need to stay at mine with Grace like you did when all you could provide was a roof and walls. I never told you how much I admired you back then, how strong you were. Your focus as a father has always overwhelmed me a little and left me feeling a little like a failure. I didn’t realise I wanted to be a father until I watched you because my own had let me down in so many ways. Sometimes, I close my eyes and remember those moments with Gracie. I remember having to tell her you had been taken, or fetching her after you suffered the Sarin attack, and so many other times when I tried to be there for her. I love her, but never wanted to call myself a father figure for her, because I did not want to let her down. And I knew, Danny, I have always known: if it was a toss-up between your death or mine, I was always going to go down first. I couldn’t let you be taken away from her and for her to be left with me. I would die for you, Danny. I have said that about so many people, I have said that about my country, but I’ve never felt it so viscerally as when you were trapped in that bomb with the movement sensor.

Chin was strapped to a bomb first, and while I wanted to save him, I know I would have thrown myself on top of you first to try and protect you if it had exploded. Same with that bomb. I had a plan. If they couldn’t disarm it, I was going to throw you as far away as I could while trying to take the blast. I thought I was sick, stupid for even trying to plan how to save you, but I was terrified for you. I couldn’t let Grace live without you, even when I knew I couldn’t live without you either.

There’s been too much loss, Danny. Too many people are gone or taken, and I knew then that I wouldn’t survive another: especially you. And Gracie. She’s put up with so much shit, with Peterson and the carjacking and so many other things. I want to protect her, but it’s not so easy, so instead I protected you.

So now I am writing you this letter. The Navy used to tell us to keep it short and simple, tell our families we loved them and reassure them that they would be okay. This is neither of those things really, is it? But, I’m hoping that you never have to read it, hoping that you’ll never know it existed. I hope that the medication helps me feel better, that the radiation is mild and that the effects will be even milder, and that I’ll get to live a long and happy life

I’m also hoping that I become brave and I can tell you these things to your face. That I can share how I feel about you. Maybe you’ll even feel something for me, like this. Maybe that long and happy life can be together, watching your kids grow and become the amazing people I know they will be with you as their father.

I love you.

Always.

Steve


	3. Chapter 3

“Have you looked in the desk?” Steve’s voice calls from the kitchen.

“Have I?” Danny huffs, though he’s smiling at the same time. “Yes, Steven, I looked on the desk for a pen. Why don’t you keep one with the calendar? It would make things so much easier!”

“There was one,” Steve calls back, “but I think Charlie borrowed it for his homework last Friday and I haven’t seen it since.”

Danny smiles, pats Eddie who’s nosing around him, and pulls back the desk chair. While he has managed to move in to keep an eye on Steve, the fact that Steve talks so easily about Charlie being with them makes his chest a little lighter. Danny finds his mind wandering through the last year or so, of Joe and Doris and the dangers they’ve still had to face, and yet here they are. Preparing dinner, adding Charlie’s school events to the family calendar, getting ready for a game and an early night.

They keep surviving, keep making it, and Danny is immensely grateful.

He pulls open the top drawer, still searching for that damned pen, and smiles when he hears Steve start humming to himself which he cooks. Danny shuffles the papers and envelopes around, but no pen. Pushing that drawer closed, he pulls open the next, shoving things aside until something catches his eye. A white envelope, a little crumpled, but it’s unmistakeable.

_Danno_

Why is there a letter with his name on? He pulls it out and sees that the flap is tucked in rather than sealed, and Danny’s detective senses are twitching. Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s slipping the paper from inside the envelope. He glances up towards the kitchen, but Steve is still humming and so, with a grin, Danny let’s his gaze fall back to the pages in his fingers.

_Dear Danny,_

_It’s strange, to be putting pen to paper like this for you when you all but ripped me a new one the last time, but I’ve had to face a few facts in the last couple of days and I have to do this—to write this—so that I can put it to bed and focus on me._

Danny shudders. He looks for a date, but there isn’t one. The writing is shaky though, the paper creased enough to suggest age and time that’s passed. He pauses, wondering if he should put it away and push it from his mind, except he knows he can’t do it.

~*~

Steve calls Danny’s name twice before he gets worried. He grabs a dishcloth and moves towards the doorway. Danny is slumped in the desk chair, reading something with wide, sad eyes.

“Danny?” he asks, drying his hands and leaning against the doorway. “Everything okay?”

Danny looks up, and the expression on his face is like a gut punch to Steve. Danny just stands, tosses the paper he’s holding on to the desk, and strides out of the house towards the beach.

Confused, Steve calls him but Danny ignores him and keeps walking. Steve hurries to the desk and realises almost immediately what Danny has been reading.

“Shit.”

He doesn’t know whether to give Danny time, or to pursue him immediately. He knows now, three years or so later, that Danny doesn’t feel the same way about him. Sure, they love each other, but where Steve cannot imagine living without Danny, he knows that Danny’s love is more familial. He’s desperate to fix this, though, and knows that it can’t wait. He goes into the kitchen, shuts off the hob and lifts the fish from the oven. Then he grabs two beers and leaves the house, following Danny down to the shoreline.

Danny stands with his hands in his pockets, staring out over the ocean which rolls gently today. Danny wonders, briefly, why it is that that ocean never seems to match his mood. Where he is in turmoil, the ocean rolls gently.

“Here,” Steve says, drawing alongside him and passing him a beer. He takes it, the reaction automatic and familiar.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Danny asks, because they need to have this conversation even if he’s too angry right now. “Why write it down instead of talking to me? Didn’t I deserve that?”

“You did,” Steve says before blowing out a steady stream of breath. “But I never thought the time was right and I didn’t want to lose you, to ruin everything, like this.”

Danny glares over at him and shakes his head. “It’s not ruined.”

“But you’re angry.”

“Wasted time, Steve. I told you once that I was living on borrowed time, that I should have died on nine-eleven and didn’t, and that I wanted to make sure I didn’t waste any time.”

“I remember.”

That was the day of the bomb, the one that pinned Danny in place for hours and had Steve plotting ways to die for him. He’ll never forget that.

“Wasted time, Steve. If you felt like this nine years ago, you should have told me. We wasted so much time.”

Steve looks over at Danny, whose face is still tense with anger but Steve knows he also sees fear there, sadness.

“I need you to explain that, Danno,” Steve says quietly.

“I . . .”

Danny needs a drink first. He drinks deeply, then puts the beer on the table and turns to face Steve.

“Wasted time,” he repeats again, and explains with actions. He reaches for Steve, curling a tight hand around the back of his neck and pulling him in, before pressing beer-cool lips to Steve’s.

It takes Steve at least half a second to realise what Danny is doing, before he kissing back. It’s not desperate. It’s not the frantic passion Steve has once imagined it might be, and hoped it might be. Instead, it’s soft, warm, gentle: it’s home. Steve sighs into the kiss and then wraps his arms around Danny, who holds on just the same.

“I love you, too, you complete moron,” Danny says, affection licking across the words and trickling down Steve’s spine. Steve leans in and presses their lips back together.

Home.


End file.
